Eddie Roux

Eddie Roux (24 April 1903 – 2 March 1966) was a South African born botanist, academic, author, member of the South African Communist Party and anti-apartheid activist.

Eddie Roux

OIS
Born
Edward Roux

(1903-04-24)April 24, 1903
Northern Transvaal, South Africa
DiedMarch 2, 1966(1966-03-02) (aged 62)
Johannesburg, South Africa
NationalitySouth African
EducationPhD
Alma materDowning College, University of Cambridge
OccupationBotanist
Years active1929 - 1964
Spouse(s)Winifred Lunt
Parent(s)
  • Phillip Roux (father)

Early life

He was born Edward Roux to Afrikaner father Phillip R. Roux, a pharmacist and botanist, who was involved in the Labour Party and English mother, Edith May Wilson.[1]:305[2] He grew up in Bezuidenhout Valley, Johannesburg.[3]:1212 Roux's political view were further inspired by the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution.[3]:1212 After matriculating at Jeppe High School, he enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand and studied botany and zoology.[1]:305[2] At university, he joined in demonstrations against Jan Smuts' policies and met Sidney Bunting, later a leading member of the new South African Communist Party.[1]:305 In 1925, he would obtain an honour's degree in Biology and a scholarship to Cambridge University.[1]:307 From 1926, he was studying at Downing College, Cambridge.[1]:309 He completed his PhD at Cambridge in 1929 and then returned to South Africa.[1]:310 After failing to obtain a position at the University of Fort Hare mainly due to his non-religious views, his old lecturer Charles Moss helped him obtain a research position at the Department of Agriculture's, Low Temperature Research Laboratory in Cape Town.[1]:310 He was dismissed from that position in 1929 after joining demonstrations conducted by the African National Congress (ANC).[1]:311

Political life

At the University of Witwatersrand, he would be an early member of the South African Communist Party (SACP).[1]:307 Roux, in 1924, as a member of the Communist Youth League, would support Buttings' effort to move the SACP towards recruiting black workers.[3]:1212[4] His political views were further moulded by the events of the 1922 Rand Rebellion.[1]:308 At Cambridge University his view were moulded by Frederick Frost Blackman a left-wing lecturer and the latter National Union of Scientific Workers and he also joined the communist Labour Club and debated at the Heretics group.[1]:309 While in Europe, he attended the Sixth Congress of Communist International in 1928 in Moscow with Bunting and his wife.[1]:308[5]:322 In 1929, he met Lancelot Hogben a biology professor at the University of Cape Town, a supporter of communism and who held meetings at his home with black activists.[1]:311 In 1930, he returned to Johannesburg and became part of the SACP's leadership and editor of its weekly paper Umsebnzi.[1]:312 Following Stalinist purging of the SACP during the New Line and its movement away from the black liberation struggle, he was expelled in 1936 because of his support for League of South African Rights and the Black Republic which were contrary to a Stalinist centralised approach to the movement.[1]:312[3]:1212 Without a job at the SACP nor the prospect of an academic career, he became a municipal pool cleaner.[1]:312

Later academic career

Through Izak Donen at the University of Cape Town, he obtained a research position in 1937 which led to, with another colleague, the discovery of higher levels of Vitamin A in certain South African fish livers.[1]:312 His colleague would form a private company to monetise the new research and would fund Roux's research.[1]:313 He would write several books, including a dictionary of socialist terms translated into African languages, a biography of Sidney Bunting and several articles and academic textbooks concerning biology.[1]:313–15[3]:1211 In order to improved language skills amongst Black people, he published a book in 1938 called Easy English for Africans.[6]:89 In 1948, he joined the University of the Witwatersrand's Frakenwald Research Station at the invitation of John Phillips and researched vitamins, potatoes, antibiotics, herbicides and grassland ecology.[1]:315,317[7]:72 In 1962, he was granted a professorship at the university.[1]:321

Later politics

With the National Party winning control of the South African government after the 1948 election, they began to introduce Apartheid laws. Due to the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, when Roux applied for a passport to travel Africa in 1959, it was rejected due to his past sympathies.[1]:322 From 1957 until 1962, Roux was a member of the Liberal Party.[1]:322 He joined because the party's membership was open to all races.[8] Roux was eventually subjected to a banning order by Justice Minister John Vorster on 15 December 1964, preventing him from teaching or entering a university and it also included his academic books and articles, after he refused to name communist members of SACP even though he had not been a member since 1936.[1]:322[9]:17 Students, as well as local and international academics, would protest against Roux's banning order.[1]:324

Marriage

He would marry Winifred Mary Lunt whom he had met through Lancelot Hogben.[1]:311

Death

He died suddenly in February 1966.[1]:325

Honours

Roux was awarded a posthumous Order of Ikhamanga, silver class, by the South African government in 2007.[10]

Publications
  • S.P. Bunting (1944)
  • Harvest and Health in Africa
  • The Veld and the Future
  • Time Longer than Rope: A History of the Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (1948)
  • Botany for Medical Students
  • A First Year Plant Physiology
  • Rebel Pity: The Life of Eddie Roux (1970)
  • Grass: The Story of Frakenwald

References
  1. Anker, Peder (2004). "The Politics of Ecology in South Africa on the Radical Left". Journal of the History of Biology. 37 (2): 303–331. doi:10.1023/B:HIST.0000038258.63985.aa. ISSN 0022-5010. JSTOR 4331876. S2CID 84723663.
  2. "Historical Papers, Wits University - Roux Collection". www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za. Retrieved 2019-05-10.
  3. Drew, Allison (2003). "Will the Real Sidney Bunting Please Stand up? Constructing and Contesting the Identity of a South African Communist". The English Historical Review. 118 (479): 1208–1241. doi:10.1093/ehr/118.479.1208. ISSN 0013-8266. JSTOR 3490591.
  4. Drew, Allison (2003). "Bolshevizing Communist Parties: The Algerian and South African Experiences" (PDF). International Review of Social History. 48 (2): 167–202. doi:10.1017/S0020859003001007. ISSN 0020-8590. JSTOR 44582754.
  5. Campbell, James T. (1998). Hirson, Baruch; Williams, Gwyn A.; Roux, Edward (eds.). "Romantic Revolutionaries: David Ivon Jones, S. P. Bunting and the Origins of Non-Racial Politics in South Africa". The Journal of African History. 39 (2): 313–328. doi:10.1017/S0021853798007208. ISSN 0021-8537. JSTOR 183601.
  6. Trimbur, John (2009). "Popular Literacy and the Resources of Print Culturer:The South African Committee for Higher Education". College Composition and Communication. 61 (1): 85–108. ISSN 0010-096X. JSTOR 40593516.
  7. Bennett, Brett M. (2013). "The Rise and Demise of South Africa's First School of Forestry". Environment and History. 19 (1): 63–85. doi:10.3197/096734013X13528328439072. ISSN 0967-3407. JSTOR 43298473.
  8. Dubow, Saul (2014). "Uncovering the Historic Strands of Egalitarian Liberalism in South Africa". Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory. 61 (140): 7–24. doi:10.3167/th.2014.6114002. ISSN 0040-5817. JSTOR 24719978.
  9. Merrett, Christopher (1990). "In a State of Emergency: Libraries and Government Control in South Africa". The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. 60 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1086/602184. ISSN 0024-2519. JSTOR 4308429. S2CID 143408766.
  10. "The Order of Ikhamanga". The Presidency Republic of South Africa. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
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